The new iBeacon short-range smartphone communication and triggering technology will get its largest test on opening day of baseball season as Major League Baseball plans to use the technology at 20 parks.

A new version of the Leafly cannabis-finder and catalog app is a remarkably strong example of a Web site translated into mobile utility. From information visualization to recommendation engine, the app excels at making depth portable.

The Internet of Things will force brand marketers to think less about intruding on everyday lives and more about how to serve them. Adding convenience is small potatoes compared to the service of helping me be a more self-aware and smarter me.

The Mobile Insider Summit kicked off with a panel of branded app veterans sharing what apps and their users have taught them. Apps pay off so well just in the unique data they deliver that marketers should be doing everything they can to keep those customers engaged.

Sporting the kind of personalized, mobile-aware front end YouTube should have, the new video app from StumbleUpon is a step in the right direction. It targets moods as well as available viewing time with content that is both targeted and surprising.

In a new patent application Apple is proposing an ad and content targeting system that leverages everything from blood pressure to perspiration, facial expression to finger pressure on touchscreens to establish a user's "mood."

Email continues to migrate at least as quickly to mobile as just about everything else we do on interactive platforms. But devices also add to the complexity of messaging. Even a simple email is now a multi-screen dance.

Whither the motion comic? It bastardized both comic art and animation into a hybrid no one seemed to want several years ago. But if we want a video format that leverages some of the best aesthetic strengths of smartphones, creatives could do worse than to start here.

A straw poll of media buyers produced mixed results for Twitter. High costs are driving the perception that the microblog trails Facebook considerably in ROI. Despite obvious differences in who uses these platforms, and for what, expect to see more direct comparisons of ad ROI and effectiveness as the two companies square off this year for ad budgets.

Getting one branded game right is hard enough. but actually establishing a franchise in advergaming is almost unheard of. Volkswagen appears to have pulled it off in its Sports Car Challenge 2. It helps when you can let people test drive a Bentley, of course.